How we built a home gym on a budget.
How to build a home gym...
2020 has been a turbulent year by any standards. With the Covid pandemic hitting all corners of the globe and having an effect on our daily lives we took it upon ourselves to see if we could build a home gym on a budget...
Whilst we are huge fans of going to a fully equipped gym we expect that there will be more lockdowns to come. So, in preparation for a New Year lockdown we decided to build a functional gym, complete with water punch bag area for those lockdown times. Here is how we did it. (full list and links to items we used at the bottom).
Preparation...
1) Step one - Clear all the old junk out the garage to make it easier to organise, plan and prep the garage ready for the home gym.
2) Step 2 - After clearing out all the junk we then painted the breeze block walls. We started off using a roller but discovered this would not give a decent coat so we reverted back to using a brush. Took a little longer but meant we only needed to do two coats as opposed to three.
3) Step 3 - The ceiling in the garage had not been painted due to it being a new build so we painted the ceiling and 3 of the walls in white paint to create more light.
4) Step 4 - We wanted to create a bit of a feature wall to make the space look interesting so we decided to paint one wall in black. This required only one coat (thankfully) and whilst we were sceptical beforehand we loved the final look.
FLOORING
The flooring in the garage was exceptionally dusty and a little uneven. We applied some concrete sealer after giving the floor many good sweeps out and this made it considerably less dusty and primed the gym floor ready for some paint.
Once the concrete sealer had dried, we left it for 24 hours, we then applied the floor paint. We chose Ronseal garage floor paint in slate, on reflection, if we had more budget then we would have gone for a professional epoxy finish. However, the floor took about 3 coats and whilst not ideal we knew we would be putting matting down on half the gym anyway.
Once the flooring paint had been put down we left this for 24-48 hours and then painting some "skirting boards" in black paint to smarten the area up. We were then ready to order the equipment and flooring.
EQUIPMENT
We wanted to create both a cardio and weights section splitting the garage in half, we used 20mm rubber matting for the weights section:
THE (ALMOST FINISHED GYM):
Due to tier 4 restrictions we have not managed to fully finish the garage and still plan to put new lighting and TV on the wall to complete the look. However, here are some images of the almost finished home gym setup.
EQUIPMENT LIST
Some of the items we already had but here is a list and links to the items we used. (please note we cannot be held responsible to the external links below):
Aqua Punch Bag: Heavy Hitters 18 inch Navy
Treadmill: https://www.equip4gyms.com/
Flooring: https://www.gym-flooring.com/
Paints and sealer all from Tool Station: www.toolstation.co.uk
Ronseal Garage pain slate grey
Bostik Concrete Sealer
Crown Matt Paint
Sandtex Masonry Paint Black and Pure Brilliant White
COST
The total cost of the project came in around £2,100 (inc VAT) although we already had some items such as the weights, bench and cross trainer. However, if you only had a single garage or a small space it is entirely possible to build a small section for a Heavy Hitters Aqua punch bag at a fraction of the price.